


Every human heart is a revolutionary cell

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Character Study, Gen, Hats and Hardcore Democratic Republicanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the barricade, Courfeyrac looks back on the course of his friendship with Enjolras.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every human heart is a revolutionary cell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FixaIdea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FixaIdea/gifts).



> Written for merrymisfest.tumblr.com, for a prompt by tumblr user fixa-idea!
> 
> Opening text from the Denny translation, with apologies for it being from the Denny translation.

 

> _The rebels pressed forward, forgetful of their own safety, stirred by feelings loftier than man, and gazed with respectful awe at the dead body._
> 
> _"They were gallant men, those regicides," said Enjolras._
> 
> _Courfeyrac drew close and whispered in his ear._
> 
> _"This is between ourselves - I don’t want to damp the enthusiasm – but no one was ever less of a regicide. I knew him. His name was Mabeuf. I don’t know what got into him today. He was a brave old simpleton. Look at his expression."_
> 
> _"A simpleton with the heart of a Brutus," said Enjolras._

During the brief speech – brief for Enjolras, that is – which follows the old man’s death, Courfeyrac allows himself the wry reflection that an unsentimental observer might apply the same description to them all. After respectfully removing his hat to observe the final journey of M. Mabeuf, borne on a stretcher through the doors of the Corinthe, Courfeyrac pauses for a moment or so to resettle the hat at a flattering angle and then takes the same path himself.

Enjolras, his arms folded and his face impassive, is standing some way off from the room’s various activities. He could be overseeing them, but for the blankness of his gaze. He acknowledges Courfeyrac’s approach with a nod but otherwise remains lost in thought. Drawing near to him as before, though with no secret to impart this time, Courfeyrac slips an arm around his shoulder and presses his forehead briefly to Enjolras’s. His eyes settle on the spill of pale gold curls over his friend’s white collar. As the room empties and fills again around them, in shadowed silence the two remain against the wall until Enjolras almost imperceptibly, as though moving by inches, returns Courfeyrac’s embrace.

There is little that can be said. When they pull slightly apart, Courfeyrac looks up with a glance of concern and enquiry. Enjolras steps closer again and holds him more tightly, the weight of his head resting on Courfeyrac’s shoulder. For a brief moment, Courfeyrac twines his fingers in Enjolras’s hair, unsure if he is offering anything more than solace or support, or whether anything more is being requested.

In the time they have so far spent at the barricade, Enjolras has met the vast majority of Courfeyrac’s expectations of him, and has exceeded others. He had been surprisingly gentle in his dealing with M. Mabeuf, and Courfeyrac had been unable to avoid drawing the comparison with Enjolras’s earlier treatment of Le Cabuc. Observing that necessary if regrettable execution, which had seemed at once to be the work of seconds and to drag itself out over hours, Courfeyrac had found his friend’s actions more remarkable, more unfamiliar, than the warmth and tenderness he had later displayed.

Courfeyrac is aware of his capacity to surprise Enjolras too. During the early days of their acquaintance, when their paths would cross in cafés or in lecture-halls or, increasingly, at clandestine meetings or spectacular disturbances, Courfeyrac had displayed his customary frivolity and friendliness in equal measure, and had found himself rebuffed. Enjolras informed the growing ranks of their mutual friends that, despite never having spoken to him directly, he supposed Courfeyrac to be a rake first and a revolutionary second. Courfeyrac, undaunted and unable to refuse a challenge, had set out to win Enjolras round by charm and wit, but, rightly suspecting he would prove impervious to both, mostly by politics.

He could hardly blame Enjolras for his initial wariness. The two were opposites in so many ways – the ascetic set against the sybaritic, Courfeyrac’s dedication to expanding his ‘collection’ set against Enjolras’s resolute disinterest in beginning one, and Enjolras’s stiff self-possession set against Courfeyrac’s willingness to accommodate. It was only when it came to politics that Courfeyrac refused absolutely to yield to the whim or persuasion of another, and fortunately it was on this point that he and Enjolras were most similar. When the two of them fell to strategy and discussion then the differences between them dwindled to almost nothing, as Courfeyrac had guessed they would.

Across the country, within the larger and looser collective of those agitating for change, smaller affiliations formed at the level of region or city or quarter, and, for protection or efficiency could divide again and again into as small a cell as would fit into a tavern’s back-room or around the corner table of a coffee-shop. Les Amis de l’ABC became one such unit, but even among their tight-knit ranks there were smaller divisions. Courfeyrac, with Enjolras and Combeferre, found himself one of three dissimilar yet compatible links in a chain which had proved unbreakable.

Enjolras’s customary _froideur_ would start to thaw before Courfeyrac’s unrelenting sunny disposition, but melted far more readily in the flames of political debate. By the same token, the similarities in their politics were tempered to a steelier edge. Enjolras and he inspired each other, helped each other climb to greater and more vivid heights of rhetoric and vision, their gaze so fixed upon the future that the path there seemed not only a secondary concern but a foregone conclusion, as though the clarity and correctness of their goal was such that no objection to it could logically be made. As though the revolution, set on wings of liberty and justice, could soar to its destination directly without any need to touch the ground.

Without their third to steady them, perhaps, the pair’s dynamic might be thought of as producing more heat than light, but - in the depths of a Paris winter, with the number of their friends and allies reduced each day by arrest and imprisonment, by cholera, by starvation, or by simple disillusion or despair – for these two to keep each other warm was an act of charity and faith as well as of love.

Curiously enough, given his mode of political operation, Enjolras disliked a crowd and was markedly more personable when in a smaller and more intimate grouping. Even when in the company of Combeferre and Courfeyrac, however, he could still be tense and taciturn, but the tight hold he maintained upon himself was noticeably relieved when his audience was reduced to one. Eventually, when in the presence of only Courfeyrac, Enjolras let himself relax, even going so far as to drink a second glass on occasion, and sometimes a third.

The two became comfortable in each other’s company to the point where, having talked and strategized the day and evening away, they would sometimes share a bed when the sun had long dipped below the rooftops and it was too late and police spies too numerous for either of them to want to make the journey back to his own lodgings. On such occasions, on the verge of sleep, lying locked in an almost accidental embrace and warmed by brandy or wine, his awareness of how their closeness in the emotional and philosophical realms was now mirrored in the physical had moved Courfeyrac to affection, and at times to certain speculation, but never so far to action.

Here and now, in the shadow of the barricade, such moments seem as distant as if they took place in another age, another life, but Courfeyrac feels the same way still. He remains with his arms around Enjolras, content with their closeness in comradeship and companionship without the need for more. For all the differences between Enjolras and himself, there is barely the space of a heartbeat to separate them.

 


End file.
